Author Archives: Nick Leghorn

Nick Leghorn is a gun nerd living and working in San Antonio, Texas. In his free time, he's a competition shooter (USPSA, 3-gun and NRA High Power), private pilot, and enjoys mixing statistics and science with firearms. Now on sale: Getting Started with Firearms by yours truly!

The very first thing I do when I get a new gun is learn as much as I can about it, which usually means stopping by YouTube for a quick briefing on how to tear the thing down and put it back together. But this time, with my M1 Garand, the best I could find was a grainy, dark video that looks like it was shot in Buffalo Bill’s basement. Something had to be done. So I slapped this together, and I think it does a much better job…

How did no one tell me about this channel? They have tons of cool videos, including a series produced by the armed forces explaining the operation, disassembly and reassembly of weapons to the troops. Very cool.

This past weekend I trucked out to Tyler’s family ranch to do some practice with the brand new M1 Garand rifles we picked up, as well as get some midnight 3-gun practice in preparation of the Crimson trace Midnight 3-gun that’s coming up sooner than I would like. While I was waiting for the sun to go down to start the practice, Tyler decided to abandon me to go on a date with some chick (bros before hoes, man!). That left me all alone, on a ranch in Texas, with a valid hunting license, a silenced 300 BLK rifle, and standing instructions to murder every hog I saw. I had died and gone to heaven. But there’s a point to this story besides bragging about my awesome weekend…

Yes, yes it can. I was goofing around on the range today and figured I should answer that question with a video. In short it won’t be as effective as a true 5.56 silencer, but as I show with this 762-SDN-6 (designed for 7.62 NATO) it still brings the noise of the round going off close enough to “hearing safe” for my tastes.

The following is a completely true story. The names have not been changed, because if you’re going to accuse me of committing a crime you’d better be right or else something like this is going to hit #1 in your Google results. This is a story about how one person’s misunderstanding of the law, even when no crime has been committed, can quickly lead to criminal charges and permanent damage. It’s a story of a bureaucracy gone horribly wrong. And what makes it even scarier is that it can happen again to any one of us at any time . . .

Tyler Kee and I have recently purchased a pair of M1 Garand rifles. We have some grand plans for these guns involving much hog slaughtering and paper punching, and are planning to put them through their paces this Saturday. But before we can fire them, we need to load them. And I get the idea Tyler has no idea how that whole “clip” thing works. So, in the five minutes between the time my box of M1 clips arrived and when I had to go to work today, I slapped together this video.

As RF likes to point out, I have a bit of a thing for grenade launchers. I can’t rationalize it or find a practical use — there’s just something amazingly fun about firing gigantic projectiles at distant targets. Especially when those projectiles emit a small orange puff of smoke upon impact. So its no wonder that I absolutely had to try out H&K’s grenade launchers and report back . . .

If you’re someone looking for a good bolt action rifle that doesn’t break the bank, you’re not alone. The budget bolt gun market is practically booming these days, with companies like Savage, Mossberg Weatherby and Remington all jockeying to get the best combination of price versus accuracy. This January Ruger introduced the American Rifle, their entry into the world of budget firearms. But is it actually any good? Or has Ruger compromised too much to get the rifle below that magical $500 price point? They handed me one of their rifles to find out . . .

H&K makes a pretty nice grenade launcher for the military. It swings out to the side instead of forward (like the M203), which allows it to take the slightly longer medium velocity grenades in addition to the low velocity ones and just plain looks cooler. But the most interesting part of this weapon wasn’t the grenade launcher, it was the little box of magic attached to the side.

There are moments in my firearms career that I am proud of and remember with great fondness. Hitting the 10 ring from 1,000 yards away on the first shot. Scoring 4 headshots on delicious animals with a 100% accuracy rate. Out-shooting (albeit for a brief glimmer of a moment) the Marine Corps Rifle Team. This…this was not one of those moments . . .

General Dynamics are the current manufacturers of the M2 Browning machine gun for the U.S. military, as well as many other awesome gadgets for the modern warfighter. This year they are showing off a brand new never before seen machine gun chambered in .338 Norma Magnum. Which is pretty awesome, but the question is: why? (Video after the jump)